Wednesday, 21 September 2011

... and a reminder of why religion really ISN'T funny. At all.

I don't know why this video - originally posted in July this year - is doing the rounds on facebook etc. now, but this is incredibly hard to watch. As an atheist, I'm so accustomed to the idea that people believe frigging ridiculous things and occasionally (or not so occasionally) do really nasty things as a result of those beliefs that I sometimes forget how ludicrous the whole idea is. Certainly, an antitheist cannot be outraged about every bad thing done in the name of religion, because it's so absolutely pernicious and pervasive that I'd never get anything else done and I'd be dead from a coronary within a few months... but occasionally something like this breaks through the torpor of familiarity.

This is why religion is so dangerous. I cannot imagine being sure enough about anything to feel justified in burning other people alive. I can't imagine the kind of certainty - rock solid, undoubting, unthinking, unassailable certainty - one must possess to crash a plane into a building or obliterate oneself blowing up a train, either. But religion teaches people to be certain, to believe that they know for a fact what they cannot possibly know, and to shield that certainty from critical or even rational assessment. And this, and horrors like it, are the inevitable result of that kind of fallacious certainty.

http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=1fe_1310865020#comment_page=4

#Warning - This is seriously, seriously nasty. You may not want to watch it, or watch beyond the time it takes to establish what's going on.